Congratulations on finishing your first two weeks of training. If you are having any trouble finishing the workouts as prescribed, repeat last week’s workouts in that discipline. Resist the urge to move forward too quickly in your strongest discipline as it is still early in the training plan and you don’t want to burn out too quickly!

Week three continues to build on the first two weeks of workouts. Each workout is slightly longer than last week’s workouts. This follows a principal called “Progressive Overload”. Progressive overload involves increasing the amount of stress on your body at regular intervals. When followed by adequate rest and recovery, your body compensates for the stress by growing stronger, ready to respond to the next challenge that you give it to do. When the next challenge is just a little bit tougher, your body responds again in a positive fashion, resulting in a stair step approach to increasing your fitness.

Congratulations on finishing your third full week of triathlon training! You should be feeling like a true triathlete in training! By now, some of your initial muscle soreness should be abating. You should be feeling somewhat challenged from day to day, but not completely exhausted. You may be thinking that it would be great if you could just rest up a little and hit the workouts again next week. In that case, your thinking is perfect. This week is a recovery week!

Recovery is vital for good performance in your daily workouts, as well as being able to continue to function well at work and at home as a spouse or a parent. The weekend chores aren’t going to go away just because you have a triathlon coming up, so it’s important that you learn ways to manage your time and maximize your energy from day to day and from week to week.

Great job on finishing your first week of triathlon training! How are you feeling? You may have noticed some new muscle soreness from doing more activity than you are used to. Did you feel organized? Fitting in a short workout each day doesn’t take a lot of time, but it does take some organization. And how was your nutrition and your sleep? Now that you are a triathlete in training, it’s time to take these two things seriously. I’ll present a few tips in this article to help you keep your new workout habits on track, and then I’ll walk you through week 2 of the training plan. Next week and the week after, we’ll talk about sleep and nutrition as well.

You've decided to sign up for your first triathlon coming up in four months. Congratulations. Over the next four months you will discover new physical abilities, confidence and a new level of fitness that you never realized you could achieve.